On October 25, after a number of weeks that noticed dysfunction, chaos, humiliation, and nameless threats to not less than one lawmaker’s spouse, Republicans lastly elected a Speaker of the Home to succeed Kevin McCarthy: Mike Johnson, a consultant from Louisiana who has the excellence of being the least skilled Speaker in additional than a century.
On the time of Johnson’s accession, a number of People doubtless had no concept who he was; precise Republican senator Susan Collins, for one, told a reporter she didn’t know Johnson however deliberate to treatment that by googling him. And for those who weren’t acquainted with Johnson, you may’ve assumed that that was perhaps even a great factor—that he was only a quiet Republican who hadn’t gotten wrapped up within the madness plaguing the GOP during the last seven or so years. He didn’t have the identify recognition of, say, Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz, however maybe that merely spoke to the truth that he wasn’t main a collection of absurd hearings in an try and take down Joe Biden; or bragging about being so dedicated to Donald Trump that he answered his telephone calls throughout intercourse. Possibly, you may need thought, he wasn’t somebody you’d should always fear about re: undermining democracy or attempting to remove folks’s rights.
Sadly, that’s not the case with Johnson, who might not have been well-known previous to being given probably the most highly effective jobs in authorities however could be very a lot somebody whose extremist views and actions ought to maintain you up at night time.
Herein, a operating listing of absolutely the most WTF issues the brand new Speaker has mentioned and completed on every thing from the 2020 election to abortion to LGBTQ+ rights and extra.
Abortion
Johnson is proudly antiabortion. When Roe v. Wade was overturned final 12 months, he referred to as it “a fantastic, joyous event,” later writing, “We are going to get the variety of abortions [in Louisiana] to ZERO!!” As an legal professional for the Alliance Protection Fund, now referred to as the Alliance Defending Freedom, he labored on efforts to close down abortion clinics within the state. In Congress, he cosponsored laws that may have banned abortions at about six weeks of being pregnant, i.e., a time when many individuals don’t even know they’re pregnant. He’s beloved by the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Professional-Life America, which has given him an A+ ranking. In 2015, he blamed college shootings on abortion, telling author Irin Carmon, “If you break up the nuclear household, while you inform a era of folks that life has no worth, no which means, that it’s expendable, you then do wind up with college shooters.”
In some actual Handmaid’s Story shit, he declared throughout a Home listening to that if girls have been pressured to have extra kids, a.ok.a. “able-bodied” staff, there could be extra funding for Social Safety and Medicare:
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